[Nomic02] Proposal: Dereliction of Duty

[Dylan O'Donnell]

Carl Muckenhoupt wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Dylan O'Donnell wrote:
> 
> >   Dereliction of Duty [Psmith]
> 
> I'll give this an aye.  Also, I propose:
> Remove Rule 60 [baf]
> Remove rule 60.
> 
> (Honestly, I wouldn't have approved Rule 60 in the first place if I had
> been paying sufficient attention.  We had that whole discussion about
> required actions early on.  I'm willing to support it without the
> offending clause; forbidding servants from entering rooms occupied by
> players strikes me as a significant restriction by itself.)

Ok, I'm confused here. Having refreshed my memory of the discussion
(which occurred before I joined the game), the objection was to having
rules which could be broken (by inaction) without specifying what
happened if someone did.

Dereliction of Duty specifies what happens, and is intended to ensure
a) that incurring the penalty is never going to be preferable to
   taking the required action (since the action can effectively be
   forced on you by sectional consent), and
b) that the other players can waive imposing a penalty if there's good
   reason for your not having been able to take the action

I'm quite willing to remove the objectionable clause of Rule 60 and
not pass Dereliction (and to veto any positive-requirement rules in
the future), or alternatively to keep it and ratify the mechanism of
enforcing it (and any future similar rules); but it seems logically
inconsistent to pass both of these proposals.

("Dereliction of Duty [Psmith]" is now eligible for ratification. I
won't do so until this discussion's resolved, of course.)

-- 
:  Dylan O'Donnell                     http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/  :
:   "You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue: /  You condense it with    :
:    locusts and tape: / Still keeping one principal object in view -- /     :
:    To preserve its symmetrical shape."      [ Lewis Carroll, "THotS" ]     :